Career Party

Last week I had a birthday party. We ate too much, laughed too much, and drank too much - all my favorite things, all of which I think it is actually impossible to do too much of. It was great. I am still tired (now that I am super old, one party makes me tired for a week) but pleased as punch and happy as a clam to have so many comrades in arms to toast my health on my womb-launching anniverary. It's important to get your groove on among good friends and celebrate LIFE. Life is a beautiful gift and I am thrilled and not a little surprised to enter into a new year of it. I admit, I always saw myself as the "burn out in a blaze of glory at 19" type...think it's the inner goth talking...but I am so so so so glad that did not turn out to be the way of things.

This Friday, I had a different kind of party. There were no fuscia pink feather boas (courtesy of Larissa) or glow-in-the-dark lip gloss (courtesy of Krista) or clever cards (courtesy of everyone) or alcohol (well...a negligible amount). This party was less of a celebration and more of a summit. Not a libation, but an intended liberation.

Tonight, we had a career party.

Joined by my room-mate, the exquisite dancer Tiffany, I groaningly sat down with a pair of lap tops, two brains, the NY Agent Book, and a blank piece of paper. Our purpose: to brainstorm and talk through our current performance career goals, break them down into doable steps, and attack.

I miss the feather boa.

To start, I was cranky and defensive. Tiffany kept asking me things like, "Is your list of agents and CDs current for your mailings? Do you have any friends you can ask for referrals?" I'd scowl and grumble that my list was just fine, thank you, leave me alone. It's hard to say why it was so hard for me to get in the spirit of mutual encouragement and full disclosure - perhaps it's because, like many actors, I feel like I am working really hard and am not sure I have the energy reserves to do more. But tonight's career party ended up revealing what we knew all along but couldn't quite see; like Dallas Travers likes to say, it's not about doing more, it's about doing less more often. It's about simplicity, focus, and smarts. Doing more is what I'm doing right now, and it's just not working as well. I can continue scrambling around the city burning up energy and hope, or I can reassess and refocus my work to match my goals.

Here's what I came up with: if my goal is to be in a feature film and a Shakespeare play this year, it doesn't make a lot of sense to spend a bunch of money on voice lessons or dance lessons. It makes more sense to sign up for an on-camera class for TV/Film or a Shakespeare class at the Barrow Group, and refresh my efforts to keep in touch with agents and casting directors that work on those kinds of projects. It would better serve me to send out a focused mailing and take clowning. Tiffany, along the same lines, wants to cross from musical theater to TV/Film but has no reel. However, she has an additional goal of becoming the next Ellen DeGeneres and starting her own TV show. We figured out that if she devotes the next month to writing a comedy sketch, we can film it ourselves and have it finished by this summer as a web sketch - both providing her with a reel and a valuable learning experience about acting/producing for the camera.

Even though I started out grumpy and frustrated, by the end of our career party I was excited. Why? Because it really gets my blood pumping to think about the things I love, to push through my lethargy and form tangible steps that are within my power to take. Acting can be overwhelming if my goals are too nebulous. Breaking it down into bite-size pieces helps me to see that not only is the next rung of success attainable, but I have already achieved a lot. I'm already doing a lot. In fact, I can do less - more often. Where there is strategy, the celebration can't be far behind.

What would a career party look like for you? Is there something you want to achieve that seems too far-off, too unattainable? I bet you can get there. One party at a time, friends. All we need to do is break it down.

so many parties...so little time...

Catharsis

It's March! I'd like to start off the month of my birthday with a great scene. This is a clip from "Party Girl," a 1995 film directed by Diasy Von Sherler Mayer starring one of my all-time, top acting heroines, Parker Posey. In this scene, Parker forever seals both her place in my heart as an acting genius and in my intellect as a damn cool chick. The rest of the film is great as well and has many of my favorite things; Manhattan, libraries, the dewey decimal system, anagnorisis, sex in a library in a rainstorm (yup), Liev Shrieber, and best of all (through this scene), catharsis! There simply aren't enough chances in real life to have these satisfying outbursts when things are unjust, wrong, or incorrect. Let's change that this month in constructive ways. Let's fight against those people who stack their own books. Why would they do that? Why?

Happy Lent

“When you fast, do not look somber as the hypocrites do, for they disfigure their faces to show others they are fasting. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you fast, put oil on your head and wash your face, so that it will not be obvious to others that you are fasting, but only to your Father, who is unseen; and your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.  Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.  But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." - From The Book of Common Prayer, Ash Wednesday, 2012 (Matthew 6:16-21)
 

photo from blog "liturgical time"

Happy Lent everyone!  Last year, I gave up movies for Lent and was very cranky.  Hardest thing I've ever done, probably, and a HUGE lesson for me in the nature and purpose of fasting.  This year, I don't feel a particular pull towards any specific Lenten sacrifice.  Maybe hot air balloon rides?  Maybe group sex in public parks?...or inappropriate jokes?

Growing up, I spent most of my time attending "non-denominational" Christian churches with my mom and missed out on a lot of the the more ancient church-calendar practices of the Catholic and more traditional protestant churches.  As an adult, I've developed a sense of curiosity and respect for the mysticism and tradition of these practices and am still learning a lot about what's behind the thinking of something like Lent, for example.  Today I discovered Liturgical Time, a blog that tracks and illuminates the church calendar.  There's a great deal of peace and reassurance for me in following the footsteps of this cycle of meditation, grace, and mercy.  

There's something artistic and uncanny about Lent, and the church calendar, and indeed about church.  But Lent in particular, for me, is a creative act; a time of gestation and preparing the soul to be receptive.  For me, the season of Lent is a sense of smouldering embers, suppressed desire, boiling water stirred up and seasoned tightly under a lid (as my acting teacher might say), and of really facing truths that might be hard to look at.  

A friend of mine recently told me that one reason he no longer participates in the church is because of an involuntary epiphany he had one day.  Already an actor, he attended service and found himself looking at it from a professional theatrical point of view.  Like always, he saw priests and volunteers wearing costumes, standing on a stage, following a script, using music and cues, telling a story based on a book.  With a sudden, life-altering smack, he concluded that church is basically the same as the theater - all a big show.  He went on to conclude, differently than me, that it must be a fiction.  

I see his point, I really do.  There's an element of religion that's mass manipulation (pun intended), where church assumes the role of a big business playing and preying on peoples' senses of conscience and dignity, family and guilt to take advantage of them financially and, worse, spiritually.  I do see what my friend means about churches seeming an awful lot like theater - there's music and performance, the leaders use public speaking techniques to manipulate their audiences (sorry, I mean, congregations), and the entire teaching and message is part of a narrative/story that some argue is created, not divine.  I get it.  Sure.  A good church service - or any public event - will most likely follow Freytag's pyramid of dramatic structure, just like a good play or a good calendar year.  And I'm not going to say it's always a great thing that churches put on a show, but for me, in general, the theatrical elements of church can make it all the more beautiful. Indeed, I go to theater for much the same reason that I go to church - to experience the truth, to enter a no-bullshit zone where I can make some sense and possibly even some joy out of being human.  We can know God (I believe) as easily in a black-box or the subway as in a pew.

And if church is like theater, the church calendar spells out it's dramatic structure.  Lent is sort of the climax.  In Christian terms, it's the crucifixion - and now, everything is waiting for the denouement, the surprise reversal of Christ's resurrection.  But for now, the shit has hit the fan in Lent.  We have to deal with being human.  The beauty of believing in God is that our story doesn't end there.  Being human isn't limited by our humanness, but rather transcended and set free in infinity.  All of it is building, building, building....waiting, waiting, waiting...

"Remember you are dust and unto dust you shall return."  It's theater at it's best.  And then some.

Equity Bathrooms

The whole union/non-union question is a debate with as many opinions as there are actors.  In fact, probably two opinions per actor.  Everyone sees it through a complex, individually prescribed lens uniquely cracked and shaped by economics, politics, ambition, practicality, need, desire, and pride.

"Why does there even HAVE to be a union," one experienced non-equity actor friend of mine recently vented.  "Isn't it sad that we need a union to force employers to treat us with respect?!"  Another, just bumped up to must-join status, pipes in, "Don't join too soon.  Why rush it?  Let it build up and come to you."  One dear dancer friend, a card-holding equity member who also happens to be (unjustly) unemployed, beats her breast in dejected frustration after long chorus calls and shakes her fist at the sky. "Lot of good an equity card does me," she observes, irked. "Why can't I get a freaking job?!"  Meanwhile, the friend who just marked the anniversary of her first Broadway contract shrugs.  She works really hard and has made it to the top - the White Way.  I ask her, what's it like up there?  Can she picture herself ever doing anything else?  She sighs.  "I dunno.  Acting has just kind of always fell into place for me.  I'm not really that driven, just too lazy to do something else."

it's blurry because it's so glamorous

Humph.  Right.  So, wtf do I do with all that?  Clearly, punching equity actors or myself in the face solves nothing.  So many actors, so many paths.  I get a huge kick out of hearing stories and opinions, and a recent passion of mind is reading biographies of greats - Katherine Hepburn, Ingrid Bergman, Myrna Loy - to get a sense of HOW they made it happen for themselves.  How?  HOW!?!?!?!

Friends, there is no simple answer.  There is not even a complex one.  There is no answer, actually.  There is no rule of thumb or formula for success in this business.  Whatever advice our friends, family, agents, teachers, coaches, or directors can give us, we are the ones who must make the choice.  After all, making choices is our job.  Choices are what an acting career boils down to - on or off the stage - big or small.  Will I sleep in on my day off because I've been feeling sick and I should listen to my body?  Will I get up and try to crash that EPA even though there are approximately 600 other non-equity actresses who look exactly like me?  Will I buy into AFTRA because they are merging with SAG even though I don't have a lot of TV or commercial credits?  Will I take the risk to step up my game by focusing on better job opportunities and higher quality auditions or stick to what I'm used to?  Questions upon questions, diverging paths upon diverging paths, forks forked by forks on top of forks in the road - and no one else can do it for us.  We have to make a choice.

I remember one of my most feared and respected acting teachers in school saying something along the lines of, "If you're going to make a choice, make a bold choice.  If you're not going to make a choice, stop wasting my time and go home."  Yes, this is a paraphrase.  Confession: not only did I not really understand what she was talking about for an embarrassingly long amount of time, but I've also realized that I tend to avoid making scary choices in my career sometimes.  Sometimes I make the (gasp! shame!) safe choice.  Safe is the worst of all four-letter words, for an actor.  And, what's more, sometimes I prefer to just not make a choice and instead avoid making tough calls, preferring to ride in the nether-gray-lands, neither agreeing nor disagreeing, neither pushing forward nor lagging behind.

hold on to that feelin'

Guys, we all have more power than we realize over the course of our careers.  I've had my EMC card in my hands since September, and I used it for the very first time - last week. 

Gasp.  Shame.

Like me, you probably sometimes just sit around with your EMC card...at least, metaphorically.  Sometimes, we slow down instead of accelerating.  But the thing to realize is, THAT IS A CHOICE.  Not making a choice is actually, itself, a choice.  And that's fine, as long as we are honest about what it is.  Sometimes it's important to listen to your body, listen to your wallet, do what you need to do to survive and take care of yourself.  Sometimes we need to choose to postpone making bold choices until we're in a reasonably safe position of power, stability, or confidence.  But know that it's a choice.  And feel empowered by that.

I'm not sure if it's the right time for me to try to buy into the unions and focus on status and membership and all, but I'll tell you, I now choose to make it the time to learn what this whole EMC stuff is all about.  I choose to pay attention, listen, and learn.  I chose to take the card out of my wallet and use it.  And dudes, there is one definite, massive, enormous, beautiful plus side to having an actors union and an EMC card....two words....Equity bathrooms.

I Want to Not Want to Not Want Things Anymore

You know that auburny-haired gal in your high school who wore crazy outfits built around men's boots?  She was the one who had unpopular and vehement opinions about politics/religion/everything that she never stopped talking about in or out of the appropriate class situation, who read (and quoted) Bronte novels incessantly (especially in everyday conversations), stubbornly tried to revive archaic slang like "swanky," and always won staring contests/vows of silence?  You know, the one who during trips to Wal-Mart would say things like, "I don't want a normal life!  I'll never live in a suburb." And, "Psssht!  I wouldn't be caught dead reading Harry Potter." And, "God, I don't want a St. John.  Gross.  What am I, an automaton?"  (Jane Eyre reference, anyone?)

Well.  X-amount of years later, she's realizing something kind of kooky and wonderful about her life, something that should probably have been obvious all along.  Sure, maybe her obsession with curia and underdogs and gypsies and life's unobserved nooks and crannies stems from something good, some desire to explore and create...and maybe her desire to be different is really not that different, but rather a common symptom of humanity...but all this is beside the point.  The fact is that without meaning to, our bespectacled heroine has followed her creative urges into the swampy land of Contrariety and let it become all about what's NOT for her, what she DOESN'T want.  And this is not fair or brave or really honest.  "I don't want 2.5 kids."  "I don't want to vote for any of these guys."  "I don't like pink."  Okay, well...what DO you want, Miss Too-Cool?

You may have figured this out, but this bon vivant of vetoing to which I refer is...me.  I've never seemed to have had a problem pointing out what I disagree with or what isn't perfect or what isn't as it should be.  My mom could tell you that the eye-roll and the "death-stare" were my specialty.  I've gloried in the revolution, the rebels, the devil's advocate.  I own 4 - yes 4 - leather jackets, one for every flavor of outsider.  Why does everything have to be contrary though, Jeanne Joe?  What might happen if I spin the rhetoric, change the attitude?  Take that same desire to create and explore and mix in bravery?  Why is it so hard to admit, even to myself, that I want things?  I don't want to not want things anymore.  I want to be okay with the fact that I do want things.

It's not about what I don't want anymore.  It's now about what I do want.  The truth is that it was safer to play on the edges and shoot down what I don't want, but that's taking the easy way out.  See, if I admit that I actually want something, that makes me vulnerable.  It means I stand the risk of not getting whatever that thing is that I want.  Or worse - getting it!  You can't be disappointed if you don't hope.  Your heart can't break if it doesn't first skip a beat in excitement.  My Dad hates that word, hope; he always says, "Hope is not a strategy."  He's right.  It's not.  But, it can be a source of inspiration.  Inspiration fuels of strategy. 

"Without vision, the people parish."  I want to be brave enough to wear my heart on my sleeve instead of hiding it behind my wits.  Perhaps nothing earth-shattering will happen at first, but rather than continue to play it cool, I'm going to let myself make a fool out of myself with yearning.  Yearning, wanting, admitting, and celebrating my frail human appetite for wanting things.  Probably no Greek mythological figures will appear to wave a scepter and grant my wishes.  But, something magical might happen.  If I can actually admit to myself (and the world) what I DO want, that might be the first step towards achieving it.

So, I've made a decision.  I will keep my love for the obscure and the strange, but no longer will I put down other loves.  I will probably stay quirky, but I will do it in the light instead of the dark and stop shrugging off the truth of what's behind my pangs of desire.  I will own up to what I want and not be ashamed to go for it.  I will be positive, and form my vision for my life out of "yes" instead of "no."  What I am about to say is scary for me, but I think it will be fun.  This is not an exhaustive list but rather the highlight reel, if you will.  My mom would say, "Go for it!"  I hope to look back at this entry in a year's time and see track marks from this moment leading in the direction of these things that I want.  Here are some:

• dance an actual tango
• get married and have kids (this is hard for me to admit for some reason, but I really, really do want it.)
• adopt kids
• be on 30 Rock!
• ride the Orient Express...it's still there, right?  Probably called something less racist now.
• take my mom and dad to the Oscars!
• learn Spanish
• visit a rain forest
• study at RADA
• act in feature films
• portray a vampire...dead serious (get it!?!)
• be British (pretty sure this one won't happen for me, unless I can---)
• invent time travel and alter the past
• direct a movie
• start a production company (oh wait, check!)
• publish a book

There's nothing wrong with knowing your mind or playing devil's advocate.  But the bottom line is, I need to be able to say yes as well as no, to stand up and be counted.  It's okay to want things.  No shame. 

I want to not want to not want things anymore.   ;)

Showtime

Inspiration becomes a solid, smoldering idea.  The idea becomes a need.  The need becomes a collaboration.  The collaboration becomes a pursuit.  Consultation.  Pitching.

Fundraising.  Crowds of supporters come out of the woodwork, from sometimes surprising and always humbling and amazing places.  Concept building.  Casting.  Booking space.  Finding a theater.  Weeks of rehearsal.  More collaboration.  Evolution.  Hiring support.  Volunteers.  Building a website.  Finalizing the script.  Organizing tickets.  Trying on costumes.  Buying snacks.  Tech week.  Light cues.  Dress rehearsal.  Speed through.

What's different about this opening day?  What's special about this particular showtime, for me?

That first inspiration, that little idea that became a need - it was my need, my idea.  It met a partner, Larissa Dzegar, and evolved to something better when our ideas and needs mixed.  Our ideas together became a pursuit that both of us just HAD to see brought to life.  We made this show out of the raw materials of our own selves and what we could reach in the world around us, joined by other artists, supported by an astounding number and caliber of people who believed in us and our project.  Today, when the audience walks into Space on White, it will be because Larissa and I wanted it to happen, because the universe supported our venture.  And because, of course, God is good.

The Body Stories is a dream come true for me.  Thank you, thank you, thank you, for letting me tell this story, for putting this show on the stage, for acting, for showtime.  Now I can say, "I am Jeanne Joe Perrone - an actress, a writer, a producer, an art maker, and a director.  I am a creator of The Body Stories.  My dreams come to life."

Home

Treehuggers: me and my mom

"Love begins at home, and it is not how much we do... but how much love we put in that action." - Mother Teresa (from Brainy Quote)

As an actor and self professed gypsy, I have often made cavalier statements like: "I have no hometown," and "Home is wherever you hang your hat."  Whenever I say stuff like that, I obviously try to be standing mysteriously under a streetlight or smoking a cigarette or be backlit by the city skyline with sirens blaring eerily in the distance or something equally cinematic, epic, and devastatingly worldy.  Of course, I don't smoke, so I never look as noir in actuality as I do in my imagination.  And I am sure I never sound as cool when I say that stuff as I think I do.  Probably I just sound silly.  But I can dream.  I can pretend to be that hard-boiled femme fatale with no past and probably no future, with undisclosed secrets and seemingly invulnerable armor - a la Lauren Bacall.  I can tell everyone and myself that home is whatever I make it, but really, that's not entirely true.  All it takes is a Christmas back at my mom's house, and my tough outer shell crumbles like Santa's cookies in milk. 

As an actor, it's really most important for me to be honest with myself.  After 7-going-on-8 years in New York City, I finally am experiencing my first homesickness.  Took me long enough right?  I guess it's some consolation to me that this proves, once and for all, that I do actually have a heart.  Yes, I doubted it once.

Over Christmas, I was hit with powerful waves of sea-salt tinged nostalgia as I drove up the California coast north of San Francisco with my bestie from high school in a rented Fiat (!!) and caught up about our lives.  Over dinner with my mom, it hit me just how precious and rare our time together is.  In my teenage bedroom, whose walls have been re-plastered and painted past recognition, I fell asleep in luxurious 1,000 count cotton sheets with the recurring thought: "This is so great.  This is so wonderful.  I would love to live here again.  I want to stay home.  Life is so much easier and pleasanter and better here. How nuts do I have to be to leave all this behind for cockroaches, subways, and a rat to human ratio of 4:1?"

Like many actors (and, let's face it, most adults of any kind), the city I live and work in is far away from my family.  I see my crew usually once a year for the holidays, if I'm able to go back home - or if my mom is able to come visit me.  This year was special because due to my brother's wedding, my own reckless stubbornness in forcing vacation time into my schedule, and my mom's acquisition of a traveling buddy, I got to see everyone two or three times.  Maine, New York, Texas, Southern and Northern California - no point on the map was safe from my obsession with being physically present with my loved ones for a change.  I even made two trips to Texas to see my Dad.  Texas.  

Perhaps it's the extra face time that's got me all homesick and mushy and showed me the cracks in my femme fatale facade.  Honestly, those cracks were probably painfully visible to everyone else all along, but I liked to think I was cool and aloof and, you know, worldly.  Worldy above all things!  But it was really good to see everyone.  I mean really really good.  There's no one like family - good or bad, crazy dysfunctional or sweet and loving.  Being around them, whether for a quick weekend engagement party or a extended Christmas sit-in, gave me a much-needed reminder of who I am and what makes me strong.  And there's no place like home.  No friends like childhood friends.  Yada yada yada.  I've been thinking today that this longing I have for family, for home, for an identity that is interdependent with others who know me intimately and is based on where I come from, is a great reminder of what it's like to be a human sojourning in this world.  

This world doesn't really feel like home a lot of the time - I am sure that must be true for other people in fields other than acting, too.  The world can be competitive, cold, difficult, unfair, all those things.  It can be, well, worldly.  It can make one feel small and disposable and overwhelmed.  Yet, this world can also be beautiful and lovely, so much so that there are moments and experience that make me absolutely ache with their beauty.  But for some reason, it seems to me that the times I see this world at it's most lovely are the times I feel the most homesick for another world, a perfect world, a heaven.  Perhaps human nature is a little bit like the nature of pursuing an acting career: we are far from home, and we're sojourning in a harsh and often dark city - but who we are, and what makes us tick, is still secreted away in a place that's full of love.  

We have to find a way to keep in touch with it somehow, in the absence of home.  We have to take our home with us, and recognize that there's more to this world and to ourselves than meets the eye.

This evening I attended Trinity Grace Church in Chelsea with a friend, and the main thing that struck me in the talk was when the preacher said, "Once you find that focal point of love, the impossible becomes possible."  It almost seemed impossible, this Christmas, to come back to New York.  It was quite tempting follow the path of least resistance and stay somewhere warm, safe, comfortable, and loving. But hold on, I can't give up.  I can't.  I love this too much.  And love is a big aspect of what makes a home.  Love makes acting my home away from home.  What can seem impossible in my pursuit of acting will be made possible by my love for it, and the love I receive from the people in my life that make my life possible.  That is the home that I can take with me wherever I go.  Love is what makes home home.  If I can put my love of acting into each audition, every cold read, every mailing and rehearsal and performance, I will have really achieved something.  I will have achieved a homecoming.